The Holy Modal Rounders is best categorized as an American acid folk-rock group established in the1960s. Born out a combination of New York's Greenwich Village folk music scene and the advent of the psychedelic hippy generation, duo Peter Stampfel and Steve Weber join forces with the Moray Eels, a rock-oriented sideline band Stampfel had formed with drummer and playwright Sam Shepard, to make the weirdest album of their entire entertainingly bizarre career. THE MORAY EELS EAT THE HOLY MODAL ROUNDERS starts with the utterly loopy "Bird Song" and only gets more strange and fragmented from there. (

The Bird Song

is best known as the background music to motorcycle road trip scene in the movie Easy Rider)

It's not just all freaky and noisy, though; songs like the "One Will Do For Now" and "Dame Fortune" are actually almost pretty and melodic, and others, like "Half A Mind" work up a good boogie-rock head of steam. But then there's the slightly insane version of traditional folk song "Mobile Line" and the cheerfully out-of-it "The STP Song" which are about as weird as rock got in the '60s. THE MORAY EELS EAT THE HOLY MODAL ROUNDERS is a truly cracked acid-folk/rock classic.

Unabashed in its own eccentricity, this set combines acoustic traditional American folk, blues, and hillbilly music regurgitated by crazed folkie acidheads experimenting with electric instruments. The Modal duo of Peter Stampfel and Steve Weber are joined on this album by playwright/actor Sam Shepard on tambourine, Richard Tyler on piano, and John Wesley Annis on bass and drums.